You were the ones
That were gonna make it right
The time had come
For you to change the world

Rewrite the rules
To make them closer to the heart
Reforge the tools
And hand them out to all

But first they gave you Jesus
And then they gave you hell
You let them deceive you
And the world as well
It’s all just a charade now
But you could never tell

(chorus)
No matter who won the war
The bad guys run the show now
A worldwide corporatocracy
And yeah, that’s a real word

Feed you fear like Soylent Green
It’s keeping you both alive now

The satellite beams
The internet streams
Feed it with memes
And prefab astroturf

The ones of means
Control the scene
They decide
Just what your life is worth
(end chorus into solo)

(solo)

No more blue sky
No more blue sea
The blue that I ever see
Is in the pills in the ads on the TV

(solo)

The satellite beams
(riff)
The internet streams
(riff)
The ones of means
(riff)
Control the scene
(riff)
The rules they changed
(riff)
Are pre-deranged
(riff)
You lost our way
(riff into outro solo and big ending)

So in what apparently is becoming my “Generations” theme, here’s what I came up with tonight. This one is about the WWII generation and what post-war America is like in my eyes, and why it sucks.

In a way, the lyric is really universal though. It’s about any place or time where ordinary people gave everything to a noble cause, and what happens when the people who enjoy the benefit of their sacrifice lose sight of what was – and is – required to preserve it, leaving the worst kind of humanity to loot the spoils.

I also kinda had half-an-eye thinking about the union movement and what’s happened to that in the face of globalized multi-national capitalism, where corporations are now more powerful than continents and are writing trade agreements that will pretty much give them global hegemony (check out the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it’s a ugly thing). But anyways…

Scars and Stripes – 04/09/15

We made it all so easy
Just float on down the stream
No need to concern yourself
America-in-a dream

We take your money and sometimes we even
Put it to good use
But more and more
What’s in store
Is a cycle of abuse

(bridge)
Whoops there goes your security
It’s the market so they say
But it ain’t funny, they stole our money
And then they walked away
So now you’re working at 75
Just to pay the bills
But don’t you ever think to blame
The folks up on the hill

(chorus)
The game is rigged
Because we let it
The freedom they fought for
We learned how to forget it
Time to take it back
If we don’t we’ll regret it

All the blood and pain
That consecrated plain
If nothing else remains
Don’t let them down
(end chorus into solo)

(solo)

The forces that opposed them
Used every opportunity
Every weapon in possession
To infiltrate their unity
But they left what was important
To them and their posterity
To us is given
A way of living
That we should be guarding
Jealously

Instead we use what we call freedom
To bicker and inflame
Some who see the treason
Feel a kind of pain
Perversion of all reason
Without an ounce of shame

(chorus)
We lost a generation
For what they thought was freedom
A word just big enough
To fill a 6-foot hole
Will we cover up our battle scars
And make up phony reasons

All the death and shame
The things that lies won’t change
When nothing else remains
Don’t let them down
(end chorus – outro solo – slow, kinda sad ending)